Bummer. Stan Winston was an amazing genius in his field.

Quoted: Ain't It Cool is reporting that Stan Winston the Academy Award winning special effects artist who worked on the Terminator, Predator and Aliens movies, has died. According to the site, Winston, who had won Oscars for his work on Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park, passed away early last night from cancer.

One of my favorite movies - that isn't available on DVD so I have to just watch the trailer unless I want to make an effort and hook up a VCR somewhere.

Quoted: UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD movie trailer - starring Sam Neill, William Hurt, Solveig Dommartin, Max Von Sydow, Jeanne Moreau. Directed by Wim Wenders. Wim Wenders' sprawling cyberpunk noir epic -- shot in no less than nine different countries -- is set in 1999 and stars Solveig Dommartin as Claire, a young Frenchwoman who comes into contact with a large sum of money stolen during a bank heist; in her travels she picks up a mysterious American hitchhiker (William Hurt), who himself steals some of the money before parting from her company. Upon discovering the theft, Claire sets out on his trail, with both a Hammett-styled German private eye (Rudiger Vogler) as well as her former lover, a novelist portrayed by Sam Neill, in tow. The hitchhiker is really Sam Farber, the son of an underground scientist (Max Von Sydow), and his mission is to travel the globe in order to acquire the funding necessary to develop the technology which will allow his blind mother (Jeanne Moreau) to see visual recordings of her family members; the second half of the film takes place largely in the Farbers' compound in the Australian Outback, where Sam, Claire and the others take refuge while attempting to bring the sight project to its fruition, in the meantime pondering earth's future in the wake of a nuclear disaster in outer space. Wenders' most ambitious film to date, budgeted at $23 million, Until the End Of the World is also among his most seriously flawed efforts -- despite a keen sense of cultural perception, a fascinating sci-fi take on life in the near-future and stunning Robby Muller cinematography, the picture never quite gels. Much of the blame seems to fall upon its distributors -- upon its wide release in 1991, the movie was drastically cut to a running time of 2 1/2 hours, resulting in a disjointed narrative that doesn't shift gears so much as grind them as the action moves from country to country. Still, while a three-hour version, issued on laserdisc in Japan, comes closer to realizing the full scope of Wenders' epic vision, rumors of a five-hour director's cut -- said to have been screened to thunderous applause at a handful of film festivals -- continue to persist, suggesting that a masterpiece may well exist here after all. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

Cool.

Quoted: BERLIN (Reuters) - The first screen portrayal of Dracula was so eerie, some critics asked whether the actor himself could be a vampire. But since his death, little has been done to resurrect Max Schreck's reputation -- until now.

Schreck is best remembered for playing the cadaverous vampire Count Orlok in F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent classic "Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror," the first, unauthorized cinematic adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula."

The rest of his career has been largely forgotten -- unjustly, in the view of German author Stefan Eickhoff, who has written what he says is the first biography of Schreck.

"Whoever hopes to discover a vampire will be disappointed, but they will find an actor of real skill and versatility," said Eickhoff. "Yet he himself remains somewhat shrouded in mystery."

This is good news not only because Ian McKellen was a perfect Gandalf but because it seems to imply that Guillermo del Toro is going to keep a similar feel in the Hobbit movies as there was in the first trilogy.

Quoted: British actor Ian McKellen will reprise the role of the wizard Gandalf in the upcoming movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" he told a film magazine.

Haha ... this is what you have time to do when you don't make the playoffs ...

Quoted: Recently, NBA star Baron Davis sat down with actor John Cho to talk about life, the NBA, his television roles, the much-hyped Star Trek movie due out in 2009, and Cho’s current role in “Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay”, which hits theaters on April 25th.

For the wall-e fans out there.

Quoted: Disney has released a new WALL-E featurette on the STARZ movie channel to help promote the channel’s big Pixar premiere on April 22nd. Cars will air at 6pm, followed by Ratatouille at 8pm, followed by the premiere of Leslie Iwerks’ documentary The Pizar Story, followed by a Starz feature The Pixar Story Continues which includes scenes from Ratatouille and WALL-E. Writer/director Andrew Stanton hosts this four-minute WALL-E featurette, which features a bunch of never-before-seen footage. We get to see what has become of Earth, what has become of the other WALL-E units, and a lot of new interaction between WALL-E and EVE.

This movie sounds really interesting. I wonder if these seniors were trained singers before they started this group.

Quoted: The unlikely image of a 92-year-old war bride screaming The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go" into a microphone backed by an elderly chorus has already captivated live audiences around the world.

Now the film version is set to do the same.

"Young at Heart" documents the group of U.S. senior citizens belting out songs by Sonic Youth through to James Brown. The small-town act has been running for some 25 years but international fame is now at hand.

A little light reading for Friday ...

Quoted: Neo, Buddha, Satan Jr.: With ''Street Kings'' hitting screens, we look back at Reeves' filmography.

Some Pixar news ... and apparently Lasseter has his wedding pictures in 3-D format. Now that's a nerd you can love. (I mean, I already have one but this is another one.)

Quoted: The Walt Disney Co. said Tuesday its Pixar animation studio is committing to 3-D and will release all of its movies in the format beginning with "Up" next year. ...

Pixar's upcoming releases include "Toy Story 3" in June 2010; "newt," a love story involving the last two blue-footed newts alive, set for the summer 2011; the Scottish fantasy "The Bear and the Bow" for Christmas 2011; and "Cars 2" in the summer of 2012.